Social Justice and the Creative City: Class, Gender and Racial Inequalities

Abstract

Richard Florida’s creative class theory has recently been adopted by many municipal governments as a key urban economic development policy. This trend, as others have noted, has significant implications for social justice in the creative city, particularly by continuing and even deepening class inequality. This paper shares in the spirit of these class‐based critiques, but goes beyond them to argue that gender and racial equality is also at stake in the creative city. We point in particular to three particular geographies of the creative city – (1) the conceptual spaces of the creative class idea, (2) the workplaces of the cultural and creative industries and (3) the amenity and public landscapes of the creative city – as sites where class, gender and racial inequalities are maintained and exacerbated as a result of creativity‐led urban economic development policies.

Food fight! Immigrant Street Vendors, Gourmet Food Trucks and the Differential Valuation of Creative Producers inChicago

“…Despite the celebration of immigrants in the creative city literature, Leslie and Catungal (: 116) make the important point that ‘immigrant’ is a problematic category and that within creative city discourse ‘differences within the category’ are effaced. The migration of skilled immigrants, given preferential treatment for access to visas and employment, is seen as important for the development of the technology, health care and education sectors.…”

“…Obscured in the creative city discourse are the struggles of these immigrants to find a space in the city, particularly given the increasing policing and criminalization of the undocumented population (Ngai, ; Chavez, ). Superficial aspects of immigrant culture are appropriated, such as celebrations of ethnic holidays (for example, Mexican Cinco de Mayo and Chinese New Year), while any real engagement with how race and ethnicity impact on labor markets, housing access and education never occurs (Talbot and Bose, ; Leslie and Catungal, ). Issues of income equality, political participation and social justice are largely absent from creative class policies (Ponzini and Rossi, ).…”

‘It’s just a very male industry’: gender and work in UK design agencies

“…First, critical accounts of creative work and creative labour emerging from feminist sociology and cultural economy draw attention to workers themselves, rather than a potentially disembodied 'creative class' that has been the focus of much discussion. Such foregrounding not only of labour market insecurity, low levels of pay, a lack of career progression and pay (Gill 2002(Gill , 2009(Gill , 2010McRobbie 2002McRobbie , 2009Oakley 2004Oakley , 2006Oakley , 2009Ross 2008) but also clear patterns of gendered, racialised and classed inequality (Parker 2008;Negrey and Rausch 2009;Comunian, Faggian, and Li 2010;Leslie and Catungal 2012) stands in sharp contrast to a dominant geographical literature which has conceptually disregarded labour market exclusions. Despite the fact that advertising, design and architecture (for example) remain highly male-dominated sectors, they often continue to be evaluated using theoretical frameworks that rest upon gender-neutral understandings of learning, knowledge creation/exchange and indeed social interaction.…”

Tactical Urbanism: The New Vernacular of the Creative City

“…see O'Callaghan for a comprehensive review of these critiques). The Creative City paradigm (and the incumbent ideologies of the ‘creative class’ and the ‘creative economy’) is seen as representing the most recent interpretation of neoliberal urban growth and the associated social, cultural and economic inequalities that it engenders (see Christophers ; Leslie and Catungal ; Peck ; Ponzini and Rossi ; Vivant ). This paper will therefore argue that TU is in danger of suffering a similar fate; it is becoming/become the ‘quick fix’ that contemporary urban policy so craves (Peck ).…”